* CEO Johan Karlstrom told Reuters its USA Civil business accounts for one of the writedowns, and USA Building the other. One is in a project where Skanska has previously made writedowns

* The writedowns relate to higher costs, productivity issues and design issues, he said

* Operating margin at the Construction unit, which books the bulk of group sales, was 2.4 pct, down from a year-ago but up from Q2 when writedowns in its U.S. civil operations and on British projects weighed

* Skanska said that, in Britain, operations stabilised in Q3

* “All in all, we can clearly not be satisfied with the performance in Europe and the U.S. and our efforts to strengthen risk management and training continues,” Karlstrom said

* The Nordic region’s biggest builder, and one of the largest in the United States, is seeking to grow its share of profits from higher-margin commercial, residential and infrastructure development

* Karlstrom to Reuters: “Main focus going forward is to turn around the negative profitability in the U.S. and Polish operations, and to continue to grow the development businesses”

* Skanska said its 12-months overall construction market outlook remained positive, albeit lowering the outlook for non-residential building in Britain and for residential and civil building in the Czech Republic